


amnesia

by peter_parkerson



Series: Febuwhump 2019 [11]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, Blackouts, Febuwhump 2019, Flashbacks, Irondad, M/M, Party, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Repressed Memories, Sexual Assault, Temporary Amnesia, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Underage Drinking, Whump, please be careful guys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-12
Updated: 2019-02-12
Packaged: 2019-10-26 18:04:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17750831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peter_parkerson/pseuds/peter_parkerson
Summary: Febuwhump Day 11: amnesiaThe hangover comes first. Shortly after, the lectures on underage drinking.Then, days later, the memories.He’d been pretty unconcerned about his memory loss from that night - the fact that he’d woken up in his own bed with a raw throat, a pounding skull, and absolutely no idea how he’d gotten home wasn’t lost on him, per se, but it ultimately didn’t seem that important. Besides, he’d been a little busy dealing with May and Tony, who’d both been there when he’d come to with matchingwhat the fuck were you thinkingexpressions.There was a strange, twisted, queasy feeling in his stomach, but he’d chalked it up to the hangover.





	amnesia

**Author's Note:**

> day 11 of febuwhump (can be found here https://spidersonangst.tumblr.com/post/181695744243/hey-guys-since-i-love-sleeplessly-reading-about)

Peter didn’t mean to get as drunk as he did. 

 

Honestly, he didn’t. It’s not even entirely his fault that he ended up trashed, because his metabolism tricked him into thinking that no matter how much he drank, he’d never stray past tipsy, just for all of the alcohol to hit him at once.

 

He doesn’t even like parties. Or alcohol, for that matter. Parties are loud and cramped and tend to result in sensory overload, and alcohol just tastes like shit. Peter usually avoids both like the plague, but he’d been teetering toward a depressive stint that night and figured the house party he’d been sort of invited to would at least make him feel something. And when that didn’t work as well as he hoped, the same sentiment was applied to tequila shots. 

 

For a while, that hadn’t worked either. But at the time he hadn’t seen any other options, so he’d just...kept drinking. Until it eventually kicked in and he was stumbling blind around a party whose host Peter didn’t even know. 

 

He doesn’t remember much, after.

 

 

* * *

  
  


The hangover comes first. Shortly after, the lectures on underage drinking. 

 

Then, days later, the memories.

 

He’d been pretty unconcerned about his memory loss from that night - the fact that he’d woken up in his own bed with a raw throat, a pounding skull, and absolutely no idea how he’d gotten home wasn’t  _ lost  _ on him, per se, but it ultimately didn’t seem that important. Besides, he’d been a little busy dealing with May and Tony, who’d both been there when he’d come to with matching  _ what the fuck were you thinking  _ expressions. 

 

There was a strange, twisted, queasy feeling in his stomach, but he’d chalked it up to the hangover.

 

 

* * *

  
  
  


In the end, he’s grounded for a month from everything but school and Spider-Man. 

 

Deserved, he supposes. Although he tells Ned later on that the hangover was definitely punishment enough.

 

He spends the Sunday after the party on the receiving end of disappointed glares from his aunt. Tony leaves after a few hours with shaky hands and a distant look in his eyes, and only then does the guilt start to fester.

 

Technically, there was no lying involved - he’d told May that he was going to a party and taken the car to the address on the invitation he’d been given (really just a slip of paper with a time and a place written in a looping scrawl). He hadn’t tried to drive home - that’s obvious in the fact that he got home  _ alive _ (apparently, he called May after a while and was so incoherent that she immediately sent Tony to pick him up). He didn’t throw up on his bedroom floor - he almost definitely puked at least once at the party, but it’s all out of his system by the time he gets home.

 

It’s not even that big of a deal that he was drinking. Plenty of high schoolers drink every once in a while, though he  _ did  _ go a little overboard. Okay, a lot overboard.

 

The justification doesn’t make him feel any less shitty about the whole ordeal, especially when he thinks back to Tony’s alcoholism speech from earlier. Tony must be aware that his alcoholism can’t be passed down to Peter when they’re not actually related by blood, but the strained smile he gives when he walks out the door is something Peter never wants to see again.

 

An hour later, during yet another lecture about irresponsibility, May mentions his blackout and the queasiness in his stomach gets worse.

  
  


* * *

  
  


It doesn’t go away. 

 

The odd feeling in his stomach doesn’t go away when the hangover does. Or when he goes back to school. Or when he has to explain to Ned and MJ why he looks so exhausted. 

 

In fact, it gets worse. 

 

Gradually, as first period bleeds into eighth, Monday bleeds into Tuesday, and classes bleed into after-school decathlon practice, Peter feels worse instead of better. And he’s never been drunk before, but he’s fairly sure the scratchy feeling that comes after sobering up isn’t supposed to hang around for  _ days.  _

 

Maybe it’s his powers. Maybe something about the way his body works now, post-radioactive spider bite, is causing him to wander through the day like he’s still buzzed. Maybe his metabolism knew he couldn’t actually handle all the alcohol he drank that night and somehow stored the excess to be slowly burned through. 

 

Maybe he should ask Tony about it.

 

Except that doesn’t actually make any sense. Enhanced metabolism or not, his body can’t just put a  _ save for later _ label on the shit-ton of liquor he consumed within the span of four hours. 

 

He feels like he’s missing something.

 

Maybe that and the stomach thing are related. Maybe he’s missing something, and his body’s trying to remind him. 

 

It’s…more plausible than his first theory.

 

More than likely, it’s nothing. Just a pesky stomachache that’ll go away soon.

 

“Peter.”

 

Then why is it so hard to convince himself that that’s the case?

 

“Oy, Parker!”

 

What if he’s missing something important? Like something he heard at the party about a criminal or - 

 

“Parker!”

 

Peter snaps to attention, the pencil he’d been holding clattering onto the table in front of him. The whole decathlon team is staring at him, expression varying from indifferent to worried to annoyed. He automatically slips down, just a little, in his chair. “Yeah?”

 

“You know, if you have somewhere better to be…” MJ’s tone clearly says that he’d better not. Since she’d become captain, she’d been ever-conscious of his absences and was simultaneously getting more and more irritated and concerned at the same time. 

 

Peter shakes his head quickly. “No, no, I don’t - I just...have a lot going on and I, uh - I’m -”

 

From across the room, Flash snaps, “Oh, shut  _ up _ , Parker,” and Peter doesn’t catch anything he says after that because he’s not there anymore.

 

_ Cold fingers on his wrist. Warm breath on his collarbone. _

 

_ “Oh, shut  _ up,  _ Parker. Quit whining, you’re gonna get us caught.” _

 

_ He wants to get caught. Please get caught. _

 

The memory comes and goes so quickly that if he’d blinked, he’d have missed it.

 

When he comes back to reality, he’s gripping the table with so much force that he thinks it might break under his hands. People are still talking around him, but he doesn’t know or care what any of them are saying.

 

A hand is on his shoulder. Peter glances to his left and Ned leans close to him to ask, “Are you okay, dude?”

 

_ No. Yes. I don’t know. _

 

With every passing second, the memory slips further and further out of his grasp and the uneasiness in his stomach grows stronger and stronger. 

 

Peter nods slowly, vacantly. “Yeah. I’m fine.”

 

He keeps telling himself that until it feels true.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Thankfully, lab days are included in the  _ Spider-Man  _ clause of his grounding contract.

 

He’s not sure he could last the whole month without the weekly lab sessions, seeing as, outside of the compound, he’s not allowed to go anywhere other than home and school as Peter Parker. Spider-Man’s travels remain unrestricted, but his curfew for the month  _ is  _ stricter than it was before.

 

So he’s more than grateful when Thursday rolls around and Happy is waiting in the parking lot as usual. Peter kisses Ned goodbye, bumps fists with MJ, and jogs down the school steps and to the black Audi in the back of the lot.

 

His stomach thing still hasn’t worn off, but he’s not worried. Not when he has a whole list of web upgrade ideas to show Tony. 

 

“Hey, Happy!” Peter says brightly as he slides into the backseat. He drops his backpack at his feet, clicks his seatbelt into place, and settles in for the forty-five minute ride.

 

Happy grunts. “Hey, kid. How was school?”

The rapport between him and Happy has improved a lot since Homecoming. Peter’s willing to bet it’s just because he feels bad about everything that happened with Toomes, but at the same time he thinks it’s just because Happy’s taken a liking to him. Either way, he’ll take it.

 

Peter spends the next forty-five minutes catching Happy up on the events of the school week, with sporadic interjections from the bodyguard. Neither of them mentions the party incident, even though Peter’s sure Happy knows. 

 

It’s nice. 

 

When they pull into the compound garage and get out of the car, Happy doesn’t look annoyed with his constant chattering like he used to. Progress.

 

Just like every week, Tony’s waiting in the living room to greet him and walk with him to the lab. Peter forces himself to be a little more subdued when he enters the living room, unsure if Tony’s still pissed or not.

 

Seemingly not, since he glances up from his StarkPad when Peter steps into the room with just a grin and a wave. There’s no hint of residual anger in his eyes, so Peter figures he’s in the clear.

 

True, in a way. False, in a completely different one.

 

They get to the lab and are immediately in sync. Peter has to dig in his backpack to find his list of upgrades, and then they’re off to work.

 

He’s explaining how he thinks a compound he’s been working toward creating could increase the stickiness of his webs, thus further ensuring his own safety, when Tony shoots him an impressed look and says, “Is that so, Einstein?” and Peter almost sets his own sleeve on fire.

 

_ Einstein.  _

 

_ Rough hands on his shoulders. Hips pressing against his. _

 

_ “You go to that fancy science school, yeah? A real Einstein, huh?” _

 

_ A shaky nod. Stop stop stop. _

 

_ “Yeah, well - Einstein wasn’t nearly as pretty as you.” _

 

Once again, the snatch of memory fades just as fast as it came.

 

Tony is standing in front of him when he comes back this time, bent down to eye-level, hands hovering in the air between him and Peter.

 

He answers Tony’s question before it’s asked. “I’m okay. Just...remembered something, I think. No big deal.”

 

This time, it takes all night for him to convince himself that he’s telling the truth.

  
  


* * *

  
  


His stomach thing is both way easier and way harder to ignore with his boyfriend on top of him. 

 

Ned’s settled between his legs, one hand in Peter’s hair and the other running up and down Peter’s side. They’re in Ned’s bedroom, alone in an empty house - it was decided when the two of them started dating that the rules would remain fairly lax, since they were best friends first and both May and Ned’s moms trusted them not to do anything they shouldn’t. And seeing as they spend half of the time they’re alone at home doing the same stuff they used to do before they were dating, no one expects that trust to be broken any time soon.

 

Ned’s mouth presses against Peter’s jaw, trails across his jawline, and Peter thinks that with the way this is going, that trust might have to be broken.

 

Until Ned snakes a hand down to the inside of his thigh, and Peter jerks so hard he bangs his head on the bed frame.

 

_ A hand on his thigh. Lips on his neck. A leg between his.  _

 

_ “You know you want this, Parker. I know you want me to fuck you, but we can save something for another time, can’t we?” _

 

_ No, he doesn’t want another time. He doesn’t want  _ this  _ time.  _

 

_ “S...stop,” he says, but it comes out as a whisper. _

 

_ A laugh. Fingers tugging at his belt.  _

 

_ “Stop, stop, stop -”  _

 

“Stop!” Peter shouts, scrambling out from under Ned and actually tumbling to the floor. He lands with a thud and a grunt, and then he just sits there.

 

The memory doesn’t fade this time.

 

The ache in his stomach does.

 

No. No, no, no. That can’t be what he was missing, that can’t be what his body was trying to tell him, that can’t be -

 

“Peter, are you okay? What‘s wrong? Did - did I do something? Did I -”

 

“ _ No _ .” Peter’s shaking. Badly. He’s shaking and he can’t think and he can’t breathe and he can’t be right, he can’t be remembering correctly. 

 

Can alcohol produce false memories? 

 

He’s pretty sure the answer’s no, as much as he wishes it wasn’t.

 

“Peter -”

 

“Shut up, Ned.” There’s no real heat behind it. “P-please just - just shut up for a second.”

 

Ned does. Peter digs his fingernails into his palms and closes his eyes.

 

He can’t do this. He can’t, he can’t, he  _ can’t. _

 

He wishes he could forget again. Just put the memories back in whatever lockbox they’d been in before and throw away the key. 

 

He doesn’t  _ want  _ to remember. If he doesn’t remember, then it’s almost like it didn’t happen. 

 

But he does remember.

 

And it did happen.

 

There’s no point in denying it. That’s not going to make it better. 

 

He wants it to be better. He  _ needs  _ it to be better.

 

How can he make it better, even just for a minute?

 

Peter looks up. 

 

His boyfriend is still sitting on the bed with his legs over the side, bottom lip between his teeth and left foot tapping on the carpet. He meets Peter’s eyes with a gaze full of worry and anxiety, and Peter blurts, “You didn’t do anything wrong, but I think someone else did.”

 

Ned visibly cycles through a whole array of emotions before settling on horrified.

 

He needs to say it. He needs someone to know the fear he’s feeling, the fear that’s replaced the pain in his stomach and turned out to be worse.

 

“I - I think -“ Peter takes a breath, fingers curling into the carpet. His words come out lilting and squeaky and  _ awful.  _ “I think I was sexually assaulted.”

 

There’s no magic cure. There’s no weight lifted off his shoulders, there’s no clearing of the air in the room. Just words he never thought he’d have to say.

 

He feels better, but only just. 

 

Ned is on his knees in front of Peter in seconds, reaching out for him before stopping himself with his hands in midair.

 

Peter’s toes are numb. He feels detached.

 

“Can I hug you?” Ned asks, after the moment of uncertainty. His eyes hold a sadness that Peter hates more than anything he’s ever seen. 

 

He nods. Ned’s arms wrap around him, gently, carefully. 

 

Peter wonders what comes next.

 

He’s pretty sure that this is a huge step. Telling someone, that is. 

 

He doesn’t know what happens after this. 

 

But he knows that, whatever it is, he and Ned will figure it out together. Just like they always do.

**Author's Note:**

> all of these fics are written in literally a day (weird flex but ok) so like. go easy on me i'm tired
> 
> hmu on [tumblr](https://peter-parkerson.tumblr.com/)


End file.
